Out of respect. Bullshit. Out of shame? highly unlikely. Out of some nagging
sense that lying for a living might have a down side? Nah.

Because they knew that the shitstorm that erupted after friday's massacere
in Newtowne, CT, last weekend would have been "The Perfect Storm" of
deserved derision and contempt from most of the people who live in the U.S. or
are even aware of what happened--including most of the people who own guns?
Yeah, more believable, by far.

Wayne LaPierre turned what was a cottage industry of pandering to the
paranoid gunzloonies worried about their penis substitutes being taken away by
the MAN into a hugely profitable (for him and a few other folks) industry. He
has made millions of dollars for himself and the firearms industry, by playing
to the fears of a small but frighteningly well armed, unregulated militia

Actually Wayne's Warriors are more like the "Regulators" of the
period between the U.S. Civil War and the beginning of the 20th Century.
They're well armed and full of self-righteousness about their mission to ensure
the arming of every man, woman and child in the U.S. That they are dead wrong
would be hilarious if they weren’t so deadly (and had such lousy impulse
control).

You're reading this and thinking, "Damn" That democommie,
sometimes he just doesn't know when he's a little "over the top".
Well, in this case, I do—and I’m not.

In my "conversations" with teh gunzloonz, ESPECIALLY over at
mikeb’s blog,I have been told many,
many times that there is no age limit on when someone can own a gun--and that
there can't ever be one. Perhaps that is why they don’t think that a toddler
killing a sibling or themselves with an improperly secured, loaded gun is a
cause for concern.

I have been told many, many times that "An armed society is a polite society",
with no data to offer in support of such a nonsensical premise. Quite the
contrary in fact, there are numerous reports, daily, about people with
guns--especially handguns—issuing threats, menacing others and, unfortunately
shooting them.

I have been told many, many times that the fact that a majority of U.S.
suicides are accomplished with a gun is misleading because they would kill
themselves, anyway, using a different “tool”. People who’ve actually done a
study of the situation, like these folks (http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/160/10/929.full)
disagree and DO have some data to work with.

I have been told many, many times that I am SAFER when there are more guns
in my neighborhood, despite that many very well armed places—Somalia,
Afghanistan and Iraq come to mind—experience horrific violence, involving LOTS
OF GUNZ.

I have been told many, many times, particularly after every mass shooting since, at least, Columbine that
the way to prevent school shootings, church shootings, shootings in government
buildings and every other imaginable venue is to ARM teachers, public servants,
parishioners and pastors and, well, EVERYFUCKINGBODY! This is said without any
elaboration of who will be paying for the training, arming and tracking of such
a program.

I have been told many, many times that there are DGU’s (Defensive Gun Use) ,
thousands of them every day, in the U.S.I see, very rarely, any news coverage of those DGU’s and find the idea
that the NRA wouldn’t have a website dedicated specifically to trumpeting the
success of their plan to arms the entire U.S. population a huge success, with
the stories of those millions of DGU’sretold to their fawning admirers. Such a website does not exist, afaia.
The primary reason for that is most probably because there aren’t enough
legitimate DGU’s for them to launch one. It would be like me starting a blog
about the accomplishments of Michelle Bachman.

I have been told many, many, many, many, way too fucking many times that gun
owners, as a class are more responsible, more law abiding, more cognizant of
what constitutes danger and how to deal with it (ALWAYS using a gun in some
way). The thousands of reported incidents involving guns and the idiots who
shoot inanimate objects, themselves, their friends and their loved ones while
cleaning, showing or fooling around with UNLOADED weapons gives the lie to that
meme.

I have been told all of the above, and a number of other things that PROVE
“gunz are good” by fervent gunzloonz,
many of them hundreds of times and yet, when pressed they have NO genuine
statistical data to back up any of these “factual statements”.

What they consider to be settled law and established fact is, in reality,
nonsense that they wish was true. It is also nonsense that is out there in
gunzloonzland because it’s been put there by the NRA and assorted
groups/individuals which stand to make money from the arms business or who have
an axe to grind with government.

President Obama, during his presidential campaign of 2008,
spoke off the cuff—inadvertently telling the truth—when he said this:

(April 6, 2008): “You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania,
and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for
25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton
Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration
has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.
And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or
antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or
anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

I think it is not a coincidence
that the states that have permissive firearms laws and “Stand your ground” laws
of some sort are also states that are opposed to women having freedom of choice
and the ability to have an abortion on demand.

A comparison of a map of those
U.S. states with “Stand your ground/Castle doctrine” laws* and those with laws
restricting a woman’s freedom of choice in reproductive matters** show that
while not all states with the latter also have the former, few if any that have
the former don’t have the latter.

It is also important to note
that most anti-science legislators at both the state and federal level come
from those states with both sets of laws in place***.

Many
of those states with “Stand your ground/Caste doctrine” laws, anti-choice,
anti-gay, anti-evolution science (and science in other areas) laws and attempts
by lawmakers to put into law practices which violate the U.S. Constitution’s
“Anti-establishment” clause were in the CSA, the confederate states that
seceded from the union in 1861. Of all states in the former CSA only four do
not have “Stand your ground” laws****/*****. Of those four without stand your
ground laws, three do have “Castle doctrine laws”. And of those without one of
those two laws only VA appears to have “duty to retreat”.

Hmmm,
this is gonna take a LOT longer than I thought. I’ll be back with more on this,
later.

is what gunzloonery is all about, the fetishization of firearms, ammo,
accessories and memorabilia.

I wonder if they’d like to send an e-card with that photo and a note about
how they’re making the U.S. a safer place for all of us to the people who lost
children and other loved ones in the massacere at the Sandy Hook School in
Newtowne, CT, last Friday?

2 comments:

It's not a coincidence that those states with Stand your ground/Castle doctrine” laws also have laws restricting women's reproductive choice, restricting GLBT rights, etc. etc. These laws, as has been stated elsewhere (such as here), are not about the Constitution or freedom or liberty or anything else. These laws are about entrenching white hetero male privilege.

They will pass. The world will change, whether they agree to it or not.